Fax in health care: No technology left behind

As the industry presses toward interoperability, older or legacy tech may feel outdated. For instance, while the majority of health systems still use fax, paper fax machines are relics in this digital health age and have given way to cloud faxing.

Jim Tate, host of The Tate Chronicles radio show, talked to Bevey Miner, EVP of Healthcare Strategy and Policy for Consensus Cloud Solutions, about how digital cloud faxing solutions offer providers many options as they work on structuring data for more complete and actionable health records.

“It kind of reminds me of … the EHRs under meaningful use,” she told Tate. “We wanted just an electronic record of an encounter and what was happening to a patient at point of care. But after we got all that data digitally, we can start doing things like population health, comparative effectiveness, and all sorts of really insightful information because the data is digital.”

Her team and their products help providers pull out the data that needs to be structured, and they ensure the information meaningful and impactful.

However, certain types of care settings, such as home care, are not on an EHR, but the information can utilize digital cloud fax and FHIR to receive and send structured messages, she explained.

This episode looks at:

• The need to convert unstructured data to further interoperability.
• The importance of assuring no technology, or providers, are left behind in the rush to interoperability.
• The continued importance of digital cloud faxing of healthcare data.

Listen to the full episode here.

Also, connect with Consensus at ViVE 2023 in Nashville, March 26-29.